July 2017

April 12, 2014

Since we are scrapping about ourselves this month I thought I´d talk about taking selfies with a phone camera today. Do you do them? Not everyone does. I take an occational selfportrait, but have always felt a bit selfconscious about it. I have however gotten better at it by practicing. Here is what I have learned:

1. As in all photography, find your light! Place yourself so that the light falls evenly on your face and try your hardest to not use the flash!

2. Find your angle! This is where praticing comes in handy. Try to use your phones back camera, so that you can see your face in the display when you are praticing. I usually don´t do this in public :) I find that holding your phone a little higher and tilted just a bit does the trick for my selfies. As I have become better at this, I always use the front camera since it has better quality.

These are NOT my best angles, people!

3. Look into the camera! When taking selfies with your phone (especially when you are using your back camera) be sure to look into the lens and not on to the screen.

If not, you will have a photo like this one above :)

4. Play! Have fun with this, dont take it to serious.

I wanted to show how annoying that strand of hair was and took a silly selfie!

5. Be conscious about your background! Take a quick look at how the background looks and if there is anything you really don´t want to have in the photo. Also, sometimes include what is behind your back for a more telling photo.

I took this selfie when I was preparing my very first lecture and wanted to show where I was.

6. Filters are your friend! I often use a filter either on Instagram or PicTapGo before posting my selfies. And turning a photo black and white always make it better :)

April 11, 2014

Welcome to our fifth and final day of our photo editing week. I really hope it has been helpful.

Today we are going to take that lovely photo that you have finished editing and switch it to black and white. Ready? Grab a picture you love and run it through steps one through five. I'll wait. No worries.

Here is the photo I am going to use today. It has been sized, saved, leveled, curved, and had its eyes brightened and sharpened.

GRAYSCALE

So the easiest way to make a photo black and white is to switch it to grayscale.

While it is the fastest, I usually find it a bit muddy.

CHANNEL MIXER

Another quick fix is to use Channel Mixer. It has 6 options for tone. Here is our photo of the day to show you some of them.

Here is back and white with infrared.

The black and white with blue filter.

Then the yellow filter. (This one was best on this photo.)

Aren't they different, one from another?

I use this from time to time. I do like that I can switch between the possibilities so easily. And I am getting better at knowing which one will look best, so I don't have to go through all 6.

ACTIONS

There are so very many actions that turn your photos without too much work. Here are a handful.

Pioneer Woman's Black and White Beauty.

Here is Pioneer Woman's PWs B&W.

Willette's Autumn Set, Naked Trees B&W.

I like these for their ease of use. But at the end of the day, I really just like to do my own thing. Which we will call, Grayscale Plus.

GRAYSCALE PLUS

Here is my photo after grayscale plus.

Here is a side by side with the standard grayscale so you can see the difference. It's just a bit brighter.

Here is the difference on another photo. If you click it to make it bigger, you can see how the grayscale plus keeps a bit more detail.

To create this look, I first go to color balance and up the green until the whites are tinted green. Then I go to grayscale.

Here is a visual for the steps.

First drag the color green up higher.

Which will leave your photo looking a little alien.

Then switch the photo to grayscale.

Once you have completed this step, you might want to fix the curves just a smidgen. When you are in grayscale, the curves grid is upsidedown, so take a second and switch back to RGB or you won't be very successful unless you go backwards. Once you are back in RGB mode, you can add just a touch of black and brighten it up just a bit and you will be good to go!

There are so many fun ways to make a black and white photo. I hope this has given you a few ideas!

Please leave any questions you might have. I'd be happy to answer them!

April 10, 2014

It is day four of our photo editing. Thank you for trying our techniques! I hope you are finding success with the list.

Before we go further, let's recap. First we resize and then SAVE AS. Then, we fix the levels and get out histogram to a happy place. Next, we find a good contrast and tone with CURVES. Now your photo looks amazing! But let's clean up a couple little things.

STEP FIVE: BRIGHTEN

This step is to be used with caution. Or perhaps minimalism. Or care. Mostly, just know you can easily overdo it. So try not to.

Here is the photo we are starting out with. It is the same that we ended with yesterday.

We are going to brighten the eyes. For those of you who like to play with makeup, you know that we try to highlight the eye area with a brighter foundation. We want this area lighter and brighter so that the light reflects and draws our attention. I like to use Pioneer Woman's action, Bring on the Eyes, found in set 2. (Here are her directions on how to use the action. I do it a bit differently. Good thing there are no scrapbooking police! :) )

Once you select the action, change the brush size to be a bit larger than the eye area.

Here is how it looks with the other eye done.

Holy crazy eyes! So now we have to take down the opacity of the layer.

Here is the final product!

Stay subtle.

STEP SIX: SHARPEN THE EYES

Finally, let's sharpen up the eyes a little. And I mean a little. This is another place where I went a little crazy at first. Happens to the best of us, right?

When I first learned how to do this, it was a super detailed and multistep process. Then I decided I wanted it to be faster. So now I am a renegade. Those who do this differently, I bow to you. Here is my quick and dirty process.

Here is our starting photo.

Use you lasso tool to draw around the eye, just inside the lash line. Be sure that you have a feathered edge on your lasso.

Then use the unsharp mask to sharpen it.

Set the first number (amount) to 150, the third (Threshold) to 10, and the middle one (Radius) is the one you move up and down. I wouldn't go higher than 2.5. It will begin to look fake. (If you move the picture in the preview box to focus on an eye, you can tell when it is enough.)

Here is the sharpened eye image.

And a side by side.

It's fun! I hope you will try it! Please let me know if you have any questions!

April 09, 2014

Did you try messing around with levels? Was it fun? I hope that you enjoyed it!

Today we are going to talk about editing with curves. If you haven't used them before, here is a link to a detailed curves tutorial.

Very very basically, the curves grid allows you to manipulate contrast and tone. Contrast is the difference between light and shadow. Tone is the grey scale in color. (That's a bit confusing, I understand. I found this article really helpful.)

When I began editing photos back in 2002, I went a little wild with curves. It took me awhile to rein in my joy and not make every photo look painted! It was also a deciding factor in my shelling out the big bucks for photoshop vs elements as the elements (back then at least) didn't have a way to edit the curves. NO! how would I edit photos without it?? :)

Curves is an amazing tool, when used conservatively or with abandon. So let's get started!

STEP FOUR: CURVES

Here is our photo for today. I have already renamed it, resized it, and edited the levels.

Here is the curves grid before any editing.

The histogram looks pretty level, but I can see that they photo is a bit dull. So I drag the bottom left just a bit to enhance the blacks, and then lift the upper middle-ish of the top right to add some brightness to the color.

Here is the result.

Once I was done, I thought I might like it a bit brighter so I did the same thing again, but a little more gently.

Compare that back to the beginning and you can see how much happier it looks.

And if you want to, you can use it to really brighten and increase contrast.

It's really just a matter of preference.

You can also use curves to help fix color hue "errors."

Here is a photo that has already been run through steps 1 through 3.

You can see that the blue from the mats is reflecting everywhere. If I used the color balance tool to decrease the blues, it takes it from everywhere.

Or, I can use the curves and pull out the blues in the highlights. Here is the graph.

which then doesn't steal blue out of everywhere.

Here is a side by side. The original is in the middle, the (im)balanced blue reduction to the left, and the curves balancing to the right. Please click on it to make it bigger.

Please leave me your questions and let's see if we can have some fun together! Please stop back tomorrow where we tackle all the finishing touches.

April 08, 2014

Thank you for coming to visit today! I'm so glad to have you here. Today we are going to look at levels. Before we do, let's do a little review about histograms. If you follow the link, you will get a super detailed, very helpful explanation. But here is mine.

The histogram helps you to know how the lighting reads in your photo. Let's look at a couple of examples. Here is the photo from yesterday.

And here is its histogram.

Notice that the photo is quite dark? That is why the histogram is heavy to the left. Let's look at another.

This one has blown out whites.

Here is the histogram. See that tall line up the right side? That's the bright bright white.

And now this one.

and its histogram. This one has pretty balanced whites and darks so the graph is pretty balanced.

Now that we are up to date on our understanding of histograms, let's go to step 3 of our editing process.

STEP THREE: LEVELS

You can fix the histogram using levels. Go color by color and then do the RGB at the end.

Here is the levels box. The first arrow shows the drop down for color. Go first to red. The drag the arrows to the edges of the graph at the top and bottom. For this one, I only moved the top one down as the bottom was already on the edge.

Here is the photo after the red adjustment. You can see it is more rosy.

Here is the photo after the green adjustment.

and then the blue.

Lastly, adjust the RGB to make the light feel right.

Here is a side by side comparison.

You can see that the picture is much brighter. Evenly so.

Here are the other two.

That's it! I didn't use levels for a long time after I began editing, and now it is my starting place. THe better I become at getting good shots, the better my histograms, which means less drastic changes with levels, but I still use them.

And just in case you are wondering, here is the difference between doing it myself and doing it with autolevels.

If you click them, they will open bigger. You can see that auto levels does a great job, but I like to be able to control the brightness. I also think that it does a better job at controlling the shadows.

TECH TALK:

To get to LEVELS, go to the IMAGE dropdown menu, then the ADJUSTMENTS, then LEVELS. (Autolevels are there, too!) It works best to do the individual colors first (RED, GREEN, BLUE) and then the RGB.

Oh, and once you are done editing, go back and look at your histogram. It will be different. And awesome!

April 07, 2014

Hello my friends! This week we are going to talk about photo editing. I use Photoshop, so all the specific directions will be for that program, but most of the steps are available in other programs, too. If you have questions as we go on, please leave us a comment and I will find someone who can answer for it!

Getting a good camera was the first step to my enjoying scrapbooking more. Truly. I was so frustrated by not getting back photos (back in the time of film and developers!) that showed what I wanted them to show. And getting a good camera fixed that. Somewhat.

But I wasn't a great technical photographer. So while the composition was what I wanted, the lighting wasn't always great. Then my brother sent me photoshop. Suddenly the heavens opened, the choirs sang, and the whole world shone with gold. I fell so very far in love. Finally I could (mostly) make up for my technical gaps and get photos that looked like I wanted them to. Finally.

At some point I realized that I was spending HOURS editing. So I set out to learn to shoot in manual so that I could free up some editing time (the better the photo, the less to fix!) but I still enjoy tweaking all the little things. I do nearly every single picture I take. I know, I know, not necessary, but I love it.

This week we are going to go through the steps that I use to edit photos. Each day will cover just a step or two. Bite sized pieces so you don't overwhelm! Nothing will be earth shattering, nor will it at all tell you all that photoshop can do. Rather, we will take a photo, or two, and run them through the process.

STEP ONE: RESIZE

Cameras record photos in JPEG or RAW or both. I shoot in both. (I have tons of card space and never know when I am going to get a photo that I want to blow up, so I use RAW. Further, my camera came with some Canon software that is terrific for editing RAW format photos, in case the lighting just doesn't allow for a great shot.)

Generally I edit the JPEG photo. Which is usually much larger than I need. And I am quite impatient as I wait for my computer to process (anything) so (as long as I am not looking to enlarge my photo) I resize it to the appropriate ratio (ie 4x6) with a 300 resolution.

This makes the photo the right size for printing and allows it to make changes faster as I am editing.

TECH TALK

IMAGE SIZE is found in the IMAGE drop down menu. This opens a box for sizing as shown above. Be sure as you are changing the numbers that you have selected inches and not pixels on the width and height.

Do you see this link symbol? If it has a box around it, as shown in the above photo, then the original ratio will be preserved. If you unclick the box, then you can choose the options. However, for photos, keep it clicked otherwise your photo will be wonky with a too wide or a too tall side.

STEP TWO: SAVE AS

As soon as I have the photo resized, I create a new folder (I always call mine "edited photos") and then save my photo with the date leading the name.

I like to "save as" at this stage so I don't forget and accidentally save over the original photo. (In my uptight, wound tight way, I like to keep a wholly unedited version of every photo.)

Also, we have just one family computer, so if someone else closes photoshop and hits save, then it will save as the edited version, again, not overwriting my original photo.

TECH TALK

SAVE AS is found in the FILE drop down menu. SAVE AS gives you options for file name and file type. SAVE rewrites over the file you are working with, and does it automatically without any pop up boxes.

That's it for today! Open, size, rename, then save as. And tomorrow we will start editing!